I met a young man last April who came to Maui for the summer and ended up extending his break for another semester. He was having a great time, exploring the island, sailing, snorkeling and scuba diving, hiking in the crater of Haleakala, our dormant volcano, camping and hiking in the rainforests of Hana, and of course, enjoying the beach and the spectacular Pacific sunsets. To top it off, he lived in a house with 4 house-mates from his school that was right on the ocean side of Front Street in Lahaina. Needless to say, this is a popular place for barbecues, beach volleyball and parties!
He had an "awesome" digital camera and recorded all of his adventures in pictures, which he stored on his state-of-the-art laptop computer. He had literally hundreds of pictures and videos of beautiful sunsets, friends enjoying good times, spectacular pools and waterfalls, you know, just all of the great things that a vacation on one of the most beautiful places in the world has to offer.
Near the end of his 8 months here on the island, after a party that went well into the early hours of the morning, he woke to discover that his laptop had been stolen from his living room. He was really ticked about the violation of his personal space, and aggravated by the loss of his personal property.
But, he was ABSOLUTELY DEVASTATED from the loss of ALL of his photographs and videos of his stay on the island. You see, he had no backup system, be it flash card, CD, DVD, whatever. He didn't have them stored anywhere else but on his computer. They were all just GONE in an instant.
That got me to thinking about how I'd feel if I lost all of my photos: family, my son at the various stages between 0 and 20 years of age, places I've traveled on and off of Maui, before-and-after home project photos, etc. I realized that I should back up my photos, at least, not to mention all the other valuable
I looked into some of the methods out there, and discovered online digital backup. There are many advantages to this method because it will protect you against loss whether it's human, as in error, stupidity, laziness or crime. But, in addition, there are forces of nature that can threaten the security of your computer documents. Storms, causing flooding and power outages, electric company blunders or problems that cause power surges, earthquakes and ...I'm sure you get the idea. Another thing is that these natural disasters can threaten even backup media if they're stored in the same vicinity as your computer.
